Just occasionally – in fact
pretty rarely these days – something utterly surprising emerges from an
evening in a concert hall. Almost forty years into an interest in music
which has focused on every style of western music from Gothic to minimalism
(perhaps not such a great leap!), real surprises are now quite rare and
often come about on hearing a work by a young composer, someone just
starting to seek a voice. But Xavier Montsalvatge died aged ninety in 2002
after a lifetime longer than most as an active composer, but few outside his
native Catalunya were then familiar with his music. Since moving to Spain I
have actively sought programmes that featured his increasingly popular
output and have been impressed with the eclecticism of his style, usually
neo-classical, but often laced with popular tunes, folk song and jazz, and
sometimes even giving more than a hint of Bartokian toughness. But nothing
from the piano works and pieces for strings I have heard up to now could
have prepared me for the experience that was Montsalvatge’s opera, El Gato
con Botas, Puss in Boots.
Obviously
an opera for children and with a text by Charles Perrault which faithfully
follows the familiar pantomime version of the tale, we know from the first
rhythmic string figures, with their shifting harmonies and ambiguous keys,
that we are to experience a work which exists simultaneously on different
levels, similar in some ways to Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen, but lighter
in its touch, a Miro to Janacek’s Dadd.
The work
lasts just an hour and has five scenes. In the first our Puss is lazing on a
cushion in front of the television, occasionally offering her skin-tight
costume with its hanging baubles in languorous lines to the audience. The
children were captivated from first to last, mesmerised by this wonderful
engaging character, elegantly and excitingly portrayed and sung by Marisa
Martins. Older members of the audience might have had other things in mind,
such is the nature of pantomime. It is in this first scene that her new
sequinned, high heeled and pointed boots are presented, along with a cloak
to emphasise her pinkness. The king and princess lament the state of the
kingdom. Apparently it’s a boring life when there are no wars or civil
strife. Neither are there husbands, it seems. Puss with boots appears and is
hired. The miller, a suitor for the king’s daughter, strips to his shorts
and takes a swim in the river and immediately gets into difficulty. Puss
summons her trusty white rabbits who, until now have balletically moved
props and rearranged the kindergarten’s alphabetic furniture. They don
snorkels and goggles and rescue the lad. The king is overjoyed and the
princess’s eyes are seen to bulge a little. And then the ogre appears to
rough things up a bit. In his lair, he laments the fact that the high life
might have rendered his nose the colour of an aubergine. Puss sorts
everything out, of course, whimsically avoiding the lion into which he
transforms himself, then wooing the canary which is his next trick and
finally, of course, dealing (offstage) with the radio-controlled orange
mouse which was the form she requested him to take. Are all ogres that
stupid? Anyway there’s a wedding and clearly all live happily ever after,
including Puss who gets her television back.
So that’s
the story. It’s pantomime, but it is superbly done and it’s filled with
wonderful imagery. Marisa Martins as the Puss is quite outstanding in the
role. She has a dancer’s use of the body alongside coquettish expressions
and interpretive gestures which seem to draw the music rather than follow
it. And she also has that unmistakable talent to sing beautifully and act
apparently effortlessly at the same time. Enric Martinez-Castignani as the
king gives an excellent portrayal of a bumbling idiot whose deafness perhaps
hides his wisdom. Miguel Zapater as the ogre is outstanding. He becomes a
real pantomime character who admits he has had a few too many glasses of
wine. Maria Luz Matrinez as the princess carries off the apparent naiveté of
the character with aplomb and her voice shines in a role that has to bear
the sledgehammer imagery of a wedding dress of pure white hung with bright
red balls. How’s that for subtlety! And if David Menendez had stripped down
to his swimming trunks to take his dip in the river in an older-style opera
house, no doubt a section of the audience would have called for a diversion
of the glasses otherwise permanently trained on Pussy’s pinkness. His
playing of the role was a superb blend of clown and suitor and his singing
was excellent.
But
underpinning all of this was the music, which was brilliantly expressive, a
deceptively simple yet eclectic mix of recitative, full orchestra and
inventive ensembles. The trombone and tuba figures that accompanied the ogre
were a touch of genius. The recitatives were superbly cast as not quite
Mozartian, whilst the neo-classicism was always delving into interesting
harmonic shifts. And there was always the hint of a cat’s paw flick in the
strings to allow Puss to draw us all in with that playful flick of the hand
and wrist. In the pit the World Youth Orchestra played flawlessly and Josep
Vincent, who is surely one of the brightest and most accomplished of young
conductors, is surely destined for global recognition.
This was
music and performance of the very highest standard – and all happening in
this increasingly sophisticated little town of La Nucia, just outside
Benidorm. What a wonderful place to live!
